by Lao She
‘Does my father often bet?’ asked Ma Wei.
‘Need you ask? You Chinamen all love a flutter, what!’ said Alexander. ‘I say, Ma Wei, is your father really getting married to Mrs Wedderburn? That day when he’d had a few, he told me he was going to go and buy the ring. Is it true?’
‘No, couldn’t possibly be. How could an English woman marry a Chinaman, what?’ said Ma Wei, smiling sarcastically, with a bitter tone in his voice.
Alexander glanced at Ma Wei, and creased his big lips in a smile. ‘Better for both of ’em if they don’t get married. Better for both of ’em,’ he said. ‘Might I ask if your father told you whether he’d be going to the film studios today?’
‘No. What would he be doing there?’ asked Ma Wei.
‘There you are, you see! The Chinese are always so secretive. Your father’s agreed to help me make a film. Should be going there today. He mustn’t forget.’
Ma Wei felt he hated his father more than ever.
‘Is he at home?’ asked Alexander.
‘I don’t know.’ Ma Wei’s reply was curt.
‘See you soon, Ma Wei.’ So saying, Alexander rolled his mountainous self out the door.
‘Gambling, drinking, buying wedding rings and making films, and he didn’t tell me a thing about any of it,’ Ma Wei muttered to himself. ‘All right, then! You needn’t tell me. We’ll see what we’ll see when the time comes.’
IV
APRIL’S FINE rain, suddenly coming and going, washed the air clean and fresh. The tender leaves of the trees were still very small, but everywhere there was a hint of green. The shy spring sun ventured a few soft rays from the thin clouds, and the shadows of people and trees on the ground were very pale. The almond blossoms were the first to come out, pale pink and swaying in the breeze like bright-eyed little village girls dressed with simple charm.
The football and so forth had now come to an end, and people were beginning to discuss the spring season’s horseracing. Sport is the most vital part of the English education, and is also an indispensable feature of English life in general. The Englishman derives from sport a great deal of discipline, obedience, patience, orderliness and team spirit.
Ma Wei had given up sport, and neither went rowing nor for any brisk walks. Day in day out, he sat at home or in the shop, brooding and feeling miserable. He saw nothing of Miss Ely, nor did Mary take much notice of him either. He was always carrying a book but couldn’t keep at his studies, and the very sight of the gold lettering on the book cover would make him bitterly reproach himself. Li Tzu-jung didn’t come often to the shop, either. And when he did, they struggled to make conversation.
Mr Ma was planning to sell the antique business and give the money to Manager Fan of the Top Graduate restaurant, to help him expand his restaurant’s trade. In that way, Mr Ma would become a kind of shareholder and wouldn’t need to bother about anything, just wait for his portion of the dividends. Ma Wei disagreed with the plan, and there were a good number of rows between father and son on that score.
Besides such actual troubles, Ma Wei also felt spiritually depressed. As springtime flourished, he grew ever more mentally and physically out of sorts, inexpressibly miserable. Such unhappiness is a heritage from primitive man, and at certain seasons it shoots forth its leaves and buds, just as the flowers do.
His overcoat felt too heavy now, so he wore a raincoat to the shop. When he reached St Paul’s, he stood dumbly, gazing at the golden pinnacle of the bell tower. He loved looking at it.
‘Ma, old mate!’ Li Tzu-jung grabbed hold of him from behind. Ma Wei turned his head and looked round. Li Tzu-jung had a very flustered air, and his face was paler than usual.
‘Ma, old mate,’ Li Tzu-jung said again, ‘don’t go to the shop!’
‘Why? What’s up?’ asked Ma Wei.
‘You go home. Give me the keys to the shop.’ Li Tzu-jung was speaking quickly and urgently.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Ma Wei.
‘The workmen from the East End are going to smash your shop up. You hurry back home. I know how to handle them.’ Li Ma Wei.
‘Fine!’ Ma Wei suddenly perked up. ‘I feel like a fight. Smash up the shop, eh? They’ll have to take me on first!’
‘No, old Ma – you go back home. Leave it all to me. I’m a good friend, aren’t I? And you trust me, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. Like an elder brother. But I can’t let you go there on your own. What if they attack you?’
‘They won’t. But if you’re hanging around, it’ll be all the more difficult to deal with them. You go – you go. Off you go, Ma Wei.’ Li Tzu-jung was still holding out his hand for the keys.
Ma Wei shook his head. ‘No,’ he said between clenched teeth, ‘I can’t go, old Li. Couldn’t think of letting you get hurt. It’s our shop. I’ve got to take the responsibility. I’ll give them a fight. Fed up with life, I am, and in the mood for a good old scrap . . .’
‘Are you trying to send me spare, Ma Wei?’ said Li Tzu-jung, spluttering frantically.
‘Would you mind telling me just why they want to smash up our shop?’ asked Ma Wei with a bitter smile.
‘No time to explain. They’ve already started out from the East End,’ said Li Tzu-jung, rubbing his hands together fretfully.
‘I’m not scared. Come on, tell me,’ said Ma Wei adamantly.
‘No time. You clear off!’
‘Right, if you won’t tell me, then you clear off, old Li! And I’ll have a go at them on my own.’
‘I can’t do that, old Ma! How could I leave you in the lurch like this? What sort of a creature do you take me for?’ Li Tzu-jung spoke so earnestly that Ma Wei relented. In the space of this one exchange, Ma Wei realised that Li Tzu-jung wasn’t just some ordinary fellow with a knack for business and earning money, but that he was a real, gutsy hero into the bargain. He felt as if he’d glimpsed Li Tzu-jung’s very heart, which was as warm and honest as his words.
‘Hey, old Li, how about we both go?’
‘Well, you’ll have to promise me one thing: whatever happens, you mustn’t let them see you. Only move into action if you hear me call you to come out and fight. Otherwise, you’re not to take a step outside the back room. Agree to those conditions?’
‘All right. I’ll take my orders from you. I don’t know what to say, old Li. Just for our sake, you’re —’
‘Get a move on – cut the sentimental stuff. No time for that!’ Li Tzu-jung dragged Ma Wei into the little street where the shop was. ‘Open the door, and take down the shutters! Quick!’
‘What? And get everything nice and ready for them to come and smash up the lot?’ asked Ma Wei, with a look of indignation on his face.
‘Forget the questions. You just do whatever I tell you. Switch the light on, but leave the back room light off. Right – you get in there, and you’re not to come out unless you hear me call you. Sit by the telephone, and if you hear me clap my hands once, phone the police and tell them there’s a robbery taking place here. No need to ring a number: just ask for the police station. Got that?’
Reeling all his instructions off in one breath, Li Tzu-jung frantically stowed a few of the more valuable things from the shop in the safe. Then he seated himself next to the display shelves without a sound, like some great general guarding a city.
Ma Wei sat in the back room, his heart thumping. Not that he was afraid of a fight, but he just didn’t like waiting for it. He stealthily rose to his feet, and took a look at Li Tzu-jung. That made him feel calmer. Li Tzu-jung was sitting there absolutely motionless, as steady and sure as some old Buddhist monk in meditation. With a friend like that, thought Ma Wei, there’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?
‘Sit down, old Ma!’ Li Tzu-jung issued a command. Ma Wei went back and sat down quite mechanically.
Four or five minutes later, a Chinese man with a flat cap appeared outside the window, peering in a sinister way into the shop. Li Tzu-jung stood up, and pretended to be tidying the goods on t
he shelves. Shortly afterwards, a good few flat-capped Chinese men came crowding up to the window, speaking and gesticulating wildly. Li Tzu-jung couldn’t make out clearly what they were saying. All he could hear were the long drawn-out ends of their Cantonese sentences: ‘. . . ouuuu!’, ‘. . . louuuu!’, ‘. . . ouuuu!’
Crash! A chunk of brick knocked a big hole in the windowpane. Li Tzu-jung clapped his hands, and Ma Wei picked up the telephone. Crash! Another brick hurtled through.
Li Tzu-jung cast a glance back at Ma Wei, then slowly walked towards the door.
Crash! Two bricks came flying in together, bringing with them a host of glass splinters that made them look like two comets. One fell right at Li Tzu-jung’s feet, and the other hurtled to the display shelves and smashed a vase.
Li Tzu-jung got to the door. The men outside were now trying to enter. As they attempted to barge their way in, Li Tzu-jung pushed back against the doorknob with great force. Then all of a sudden, he let go, and three or four of them came tumbling inside and landed in a heap.
With one leap, Li Tzu-jung jumped on top of the uppermost man, straddling him, and treading with one foot on the neck of the man underneath.
‘Ow!’ ‘Argh!’ ‘. . . louu!’ The men beneath him were shouting, making the weirdest noises. Sitting on them, he was pushing down as hard as he could while they were heaving upwards for all they were worth. He knew that he couldn’t keep it up for much longer. He shouted to the men still outside the door.
‘Chow, Hong, Lee Sam-hing! Pan Kow-lei! This is my shop! It’s my shop! What are you up to?’ He was shouting in Cantonese. He knew the men from his work as an interpreter. All the East End Chinese knew him too.
Hearing Li Tzu-jung call them by name, the men outside didn’t push their way in, but instead just looked at one another, as if they didn’t know what to do. Seeing that he’d shocked them into inaction, Li Tzu-jung jumped backwards off the pile of men, tumbling to the floor. As he scrambled to his feet, they did too, and Li Tzu-jung planted himself squarely in front of them, barring their way.
‘Run! Run!’ Li Tzu-jung yelled at them, waving his hands. ‘The police’ll be here any minute! Run!’
The men turned and shot a look towards the end of the street, where already a bunch of onlookers was gawping. But it was still early morning, and there weren’t many people about. The Chinese men looked at each other once more, hesitant and wavering, and Li Tzu-jung let them have another. ‘Run!’
One of them ran off, and the others, without a word, took to their heels too.
Just then, the police arrived at the end of the street, caught a couple of them and carted them off. But all the rest had managed to escape.
The lunchtime issues of the evening papers all bore the big headlines:
EAST END CHINESE RIOT AT ANTIQUES SHOP
EAST END CHINESE LAWLESS
STARTLING ROBBERY CASE
GOVERNMENT MUST TAKE STEPS TO CONTROL
CHINESE
Photographs of the Mas’ antiques shop, and of Ma Wei, appeared on the front page of the newspapers, and the Evening Star even printed under Ma Wei’s photo the words ‘Hero whose fighting fists routed the gangsters’. Crowd upon crowd of newspaper reporters turned up with their cameras to interrogate Ma Wei, and some of them even found their way to Gordon Street to interview Mr Ma. Their published reports of his words were ‘Me no say. Me no speak’, although Mr Ma had used no such language. When the newspapers report the English spoken by Chinese, they always use that kind of rubbishy nonsense style, otherwise readers wouldn’t believe the articles. The English have no gift for languages, so they can never imagine that a foreigner might be able to speak good English.
The affair shook the whole city. Two extra squads of police were drafted to the East End to keep an eye on the movements of the Chinese. That same evening, a Member of Parliament questioned the home secretary as to why he didn’t expel all the Chinese from the country.
From noon till the shop closed, there was a cluster of people outside the Mas’ antiques shop, and within three hours Ma Wei sold more than fifty pounds’ worth of goods.
Mr Ma was so frightened that he didn’t dare set foot outside the house all day, and he waited eagerly for Ma Wei’s return so that he could see whether in fact his son had been hurt in the fighting. At the same time he resolved to shut up shop, lest sooner or later his own head be knocked off by a flying brick.
There were two men standing outside the front door of Gordon Street all day. According to Mrs Wedderburn, they were plainclothes detectives. Mr Ma grew more nervous and even stopped smoking, for fear the detectives might glimpse the sparks from the bowl of his pipe.
V
THE CHINESE workmen in London are divided into two factions. One of these is prepared to take any work that’s offered, whether it’s decent work or not. When the film company was looking around for cringing Chinamen, it went to this mob. The other group consists of hard workers, men of resolute and independent disposition, who, although illiterate, unable to speak English and possessing no trade skills, are truly patriotic, and would rather starve than do anything that might lose face for their country.
The men of both parties share a coarseness of manner, a limited knowledge and a miserable existence. Where they differ is that one party is solely interested in earning its daily bread, no matter how, while the other wants to earn its daily bread in a decent way. Neither party has any time for the other, and when their adherents meet they at once start fighting. When unpatriotic dolts meet patriotic dolts, there’ll be fighting, no two ways about it. And as soon as they fight, they provide the foreigners with lots of funny stories, and nasty things get said about both patriotic and unpatriotic alike.
It’s not their fault, though. The blame lies with the Chinese government for choosing to ignore these men. If a government affords no protection or assistance to its subjects, those subjects are easy targets, aren’t they?
The Chinese students in England are also divided into two factions. One faction comes from China proper, while the other consists of the offspring of overseas Chinese. All love their mother country, China, while failing to comprehend the state in which that country is. The offspring of the overseas Chinese, having been born outside China, are ignorant of the state of affairs within the country. The students from China proper are forever trying to make foreigners understand China without having realised that while China’s so feeble, there’s no way foreigners will respect it or its people. Nations of the same stature are like brothers. But the little mouse needn’t try getting chummy with the tiger.
It’s become an established historical tradition to sneer at the Chinese in foreign films, plays and novels. On the Chinese stage, it’s an established historical tradition that the actor playing Ts’ao Ts’ao, the warlord who lived in the second century AD, is always made up with lead-white face paint, which signifies treachery. Just as there could never be a Ts’ao Ts’ao with black make-up, the colour of integrity, there could never be a good Chinese person on the English stage. Such things aren’t a matter of feeling, they’re historical.
The English don’t set out to belittle anyone, but seek to create a fine piece of literature. If a Chinese playwright had a black-faced Ts’ao Ts’ao in his play, everybody would ridicule him for his ignorance. If a foreigner wrote a play about the Chinese that didn’t include murder and arson, people would naturally ridicule him in the same way. There’s no hope for Ts’ao Ts’ao, and it’s not likely that his face will change colour in the next few years. But there’s still some hope for China. If only the Chinese can strengthen their nation, the foreigners will drop their pens and cease writing ‘Chinese’ plays. Humans abuse the weak and fear the strong.
The film that Alexander had persuaded Mr Ma to act in had been written by one of England’s most celebrated literary figures. This gentleman was perfectly aware that the Chinese are a civilised people, but to suit others’ attitudes and for the sake of art, he nonetheless depicted the Chinese as cruel
and sinister. Had he not done so, he would have found it impossible to earn people’s praise and approbation.
The film was set in Shanghai, and Alexander had provided concessions, and another represented the Chinese part of the city. The former was clean, beautiful and orderly, and the latter was filthy, chaotic, and thoroughly dark and dismal.
As to the story, it concerned a Chinese girl’s falling in love with an Englishman. Her father wants to kill her as punishment, but, for some odd reason, the old Chinaman takes poison himself. Upon his death, his friends and relatives seek to avenge him. They bury the girl alive, and after the burial, go off and seek out the young Englishman. He and some British soldiers get stuck into them, and beat them until they beg for mercy on bended knees. The workmen from the East End played the crowd of Chinese who got thrashed. Mr Ma played a rich Chinese merchant with a little pigtail, who, while the fight was in progress, stood by watching the fun and excitement.
When the Chinese students in London heard about the film, they were up in arms, held conference after conference, and requested the legation to make a protest. The legation duly protested, and the following day the film’s screenwriter said some very nasty things about the Chinese legation in the newspapers. Saying such things about another nation’s legation should in fact call for a stern response, but since China would never dare start a war, why respond?
Seeing that the sole effect of the legation’s protest had been to elicit abuse, the students held another conference to discuss what was to be done. The chairman of the conference was the Mr Mao who’d been given a punching in the Top Graduate. It was Mr Mao’s opinion that a protest was of no use, and the only thing to do was stop any Chinese person from acting in the film. The students elected Mr Mao their representative to go to the East End and communicate their decision. The workmen – those of the unpatriotic faction – had already signed a contract with the film company, and there was no means of going back on the agreement, so Mr Mao incited the doltishly patriotic workmen to declare war on those who were going to act in the film.